Learning To Go Mr. Avery's Class on the Web 

This Tuesday marks our first Early Release Day! Teachers will be engaging in Professional Development across the district. I’ll be meeting in consultation with school psychologists to plan and personalize a “Regulation Station” in our classroom to empower students to center, calm, and focus their attention. Note: There is no lunch period on Early Release Days. However, we will have a snack break at 11:30 since kids are used to eating at that time of day. Of course, it’s up to you whether you’d like your child to eat something then or wait till s/he gets home!
I have started a snowflake jar (like a marble jar) in class for earning points toward a celebration before the holidays. I’m looking to encourage habits of mind, especially good collaboration skills and self-regulation. Each day the kids will evaluate themselves with my help, and snowflakes will be added for each accomplishment, helping us reach our goal.

Our celebration will be on Friday, December 23rd. Kids will be invited to wear pajamas at school (more on the details to come), and we will spend the day honoring each other’s accomplishments so far. In addition, we’ll have a winter sing-a-long with the whole school; create a working craft to help measure weather at home this winter; write a narrative to accompany Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman; and more!

In math this week, students will be taught the basics of division. Just like multiplication was all about adding equal groups, at this introductory level they should understand division as splitting things into equal groups. Think about that while looking at the picture below:

Notice how it calls for creating a given number of groups with a set number of objects in each group. One way to divide, therefore, is to minus groups of 4 from the whole. Hence, 12 – 4 – 4 – 4 = 0. Students will be taught to try out this strategy, as well as others like “dealing” out objects into groups like you would do with playing cards (one in this group, then one in that group; two in this group, and two in that group; etc.). Like with multiplication, there is no expectation that kids work without objects or pictures to perform operations.

Our narrative writing is progressing nicely! Notice the great sense of author’s voice and detail in these recent pieces from 1) Martin; 2) Oliver; 3) Prisha; and 4) Naomi: 1) Me and my friends ran outside at night trick-or-treating. We dashed out of the house. Whoosh! I jumped in the air and…boom! I landed on the patio. Ding dong! I rang the doorbell. 2) I grabbed my poles in one hand and jumped off the ski lift car. I was at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain about to fly down it. My mom said “Go ahead!” I took a deep breath and…ZOOM! 3) I rushed to put on my coat and went outside the door. I saw colorful leaves on trees and I heard the cool breeze. A lovely autumn day was coming up. So I dashed toward Dad as he was finishing his leaf pile. I decided to sneak up on him and surprise him! 4)  I clapped hands with my partner as I stepped forward with my brown boots, then stepped back and clapped my own hands together three times. Then the person in front of me glided down the floor with her partner. Awesome!

We will spend the first part of this trimester learning the elements of narrative writing in greater depth than before. This week we will review what good description sounds like and how to modify nouns with elaborative detail that puts the reader in the picture. Kids will create descriptive paragraphs that bring to life the jack-o-lanterns made on Fall Festival.

 Our science focus this term is on research design! In lots of hands-on lessons, students will learn to: ask questions and make claims; design investigations to test them; collect and analyze data; and draw conclusions. As a central theme, we will focus on earth science, specifically weather. This week, students will engage in observations and investigations designed to get them thinking and wondering about air and water. Here’s a link to the FOSS weather unit page, used by teachers in the district: http://lhsfoss.org/scope/folio/html/AirandWeather/1.html. And a quick web search will present you with lots of kid-friendly sites such as these, which we will use in class:

http://eo.ucar.edu/webweather/

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/

Here’s us in action, working with equal groups and writing multiplication sentences: